CBCP tags websites for ‘carrying fake or unverified contents’

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) published its Pastoral Guidelines on the Use of Social Media with an appendix on websites “carrying fake or unverified contents” believing that Christian cannot be part of falsehood, deceit and lies.

“A fact is anything that is or that happens. If one man kills another, it cannot but be a fact that the deed was done, and any “alternative fact” that would have it so that no killing was done is simply false, and, when meant to deceive, a lie,” stated in their pastoral letter, Wednesday, signed by Archbishop Socrates Vilegas.

The pastoral letter also added “the duty to speak the truth is so elemental a demand of morality and of good social order that it can hardly be reduced to more elementary precepts. It is almost as fundamental as the first principle of all morality: “Do good; avoid evil.” Human life would be impossible in a society where we constantly and habitually deceived each other.”

Bishops said “Alternative facts” and “fake news” engender faulty decisions many times with disastrous long-term consequences to persons and to communities. There are persons today who have given themselves to the service of reporting what never happened, concealing what really happened, and distorting what should be presented in a straightforward manner.

Here is the partial list of websites “carrying fake or unverified contents,” based on the CBCP Pastoral Guidelines on the Use of Social Media issued on January 30:

The links for Guard1an, Kalye Pinoy, Trending Balita, Trending News Portal, and TrendTitan – are either dead or under construction while OKD2 links into the website “Pinoy Pride” under the URL thephpride.blogspot.com.

Meanwhile, the website FilipiNews PH is not in the URL www.filipinewsph.com, as stated in the CBCP guidelines, but in the URL www.filipinewsph.net.

This reflects the characteristic of fake news websites, which can morph as needed or move to other URLs, depending on whether they have been tagged or blocked as sources of fake news.

Beyond the CBCP’s partial list, more fake news sites spread through individuals like the officials and agencies of the Duterte administration, such as Communications Assistant Secretary Mocha Uson, who also been accused of spreading fake news.

According to Bishops, social media has become the unfortunate site of “alternative facts” and “fake news”.